Virginia quake shuts nuclear power plant
By Bill Allison Aug 23 2011 3:52 p.m.A 5.8 magnitude earthquate with an epicenter in Mineral, Va., some 84 miles from Washington, D.C., caused a nuclear power plant in Virginia to shut down, and caused "unusual event declarations" at nine other nuclear generating plants, CNN reports.
As we noted last March, when the meltdown at Japan's Fukushima reactor dominated the news, nuclear power plants in the United States live along fault lines. As we wrote then, "Using data from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Geological Survey, we generated the following map, which shows the location of the aforementioned reactors (there are 104 of them) vis-a-vis geological fault lines. We also included locations of significant historical earthquakes. Take a look and see if we might be vulnerable to a nuclear disaster if/when 'the big one' hits, and click on the red dots to learn more about each nuclear power plant:"
Here's the map we posted back then. Note: There's a lot of data to load, so give it a couple of minutes.
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